Mrs. R. became pregnant. During pregnancy the remains of depression and imperative ideas disappeared. In September, during about the ninth week of pregnancy, abortion took place. After that, renewed symptoms of hystero-neurasthenia. In addition to this, there were anteflexio et latero-positio dextra uteri, anæmia, and atonia ventriculi.
At the consultation the patient gave the impression of a very neuropathic, tainted person. The neuropathic expression of the eyes cannot be described. Appearance entirely feminine. With the exception of a very narrow, arched palate, there was no skeletal abnormality. With difficulty the patient could be brought to give the details of her sexual abnormality. She complained that she had married without knowing what marriage between men and women was. She loved her husband dearly for his mental qualities, but marital intercourse was a pain to her; she did it unwillingly, without ever finding any satisfaction in it. Post actum, all day long she was weary and exhausted. Since the abortion and the interdiction of sexual intercourse by the physicians, she had been better; but she thought of the future with horror. She esteemed her husband, and loved him mentally; but she would do anything for him, if he would but avoid her sexually in the future. She hoped to have sensual feeling for him in time. When he played the violin, she seemed to feel the beginning of an inclination for him that was something more than friendship; but it was only transitory, and she could get no assurance for the future in it. Her greatest happiness was in correspondence with her former lover. She felt that this was wrong, but she could not give it up; for to do so made her miserable.
It is remarkable that the anomaly may be long limited to mere perversion of the sexual instinct, and that the impulse to perverse indulgence may make its appearance after some accidental cause,—e.g., seduction, or some neurosis. Such cases might easily be mistaken for acquired contrary sexual instinct (v. supra), if, with reference to the sexual feeling, they should not be demonstrated by the history to be original and congenital.
Case 118. Mrs. C., aged 32, wife of an official, a large, not uncomely woman, feminine in appearance, comes of a neuropathic and emotional mother. A brother was psychopathic, and died of drink. Patient was always peculiar, obstinate, silent, quick-tempered, and eccentric. The brothers and sisters are excitable people. Pulmonary phthisis has been frequent in her family. When only a girl of thirteen, with signs of great sexual excitement, she attracted attention by enthusiastic love for a female friend of her own age. Her education was strict, though the patient secretly read many novels, and wrote innumerable poems. She married at eighteen to free herself from unpleasant circumstances at home.
She says she has always been indifferent toward men. In fact, she avoided balls. Female statues pleased her. Her greatest happiness was to think of marriage with a beloved woman. She was not aware of her sexual peculiarity until marriage, and the thing had remained inexplicable to her. Patient did her marital duty, and bore three children, two of whom were subject to convulsions. She lived pleasantly with her husband, but she esteemed him only for his moral qualities. She gladly avoided coitus. “I should have preferred intercourse with a woman.”
Until 1878 she had been neurasthenic. On the occasion of a sojourn at a watering-place, she made the acquaintance of a female urning, whose history I have reported as Case 6, in the Irrenfreund, No. 1, 1884.
The patient came home a changed person. Her husband says: “She was no longer a woman, no longer had any love for me and the children, and would have no more of marital approaches. She was inflamed with passionate love for her female friend, and had taste for nothing else.” After the husband forbade her lover the house, there was interchange of letters with such expressions in them as “My dove! I live only for you, my soul.” There were meetings and frightful excitement when an expected letter did not come. The relation was in nowise platonic. From certain indications it is presumable that mutual masturbation was the means of sensual satisfaction. This relation lasted until 1882, and made the patient decidedly neurasthenic.
She absolutely neglected the house, and her husband hired a woman of sixty years as a house-keeper, and also a governess for the children. The patient fell in love with both, who, at least, allowed caresses, and profited materially through the love of their mistress.
In the latter part of 1883, on account of developing pulmonary tuberculosis, she had to go south. There she became acquainted with a Russian lady of forty years, and fell passionately in love with her; but she did not meet with a return of love in her sense. One day insanity became manifest. She thought the Russian lady a nihilist; that she was magnetized by her; and she presented formal persecutory delusions. She fled, and was caught in an Italian city, and placed in a hospital, where she soon became quiet. Again she followed the lady with her love, felt herself very unhappy, and planned suicide.
When she returned home, she was greatly depressed because she did not have the lady, and was contrary toward her family. A delusive, erotic state of excitement came on about the end of May, 1884. She danced, shouted, and called herself a man; demanded her former lovers, and said she was of royal blood. She escaped from the house in male attire, and was taken to the asylum in a state of eroto-maniacal excitement. After a few days the exaltation disappeared. The patient became quiet, and made a despairing attempt at suicide; and after it she was in great anguish of mind with tædium vitæ. The perverse sexual feeling grew less and less noticeable, and the tuberculosis progressed. The patient died of phthisis in the beginning of 1885.